Scheduled Backups of Home Directory

[Alexander Skwar]

· Gregory Piñero <gregpinero at gmail.com>:

> On 8/7/06, Alexander Skwar <listen at alexander.skwar.name> wrote:
>> > b. How can I schedule/automate a script that needs root privledges?
>>
>> Use the crontab from user root. Alternatively, modify the /etc/fstab,
>> so that it includes "users" in the line for your 2nd hard drive.
> 
> Would you mind elaborting on these two ideas, or pointing me towards
> some web resources or search terms?

For what? For crontab or for fstab?

>> Dump the script and use rsnapshot. Check out the home page
>> to see why it's so great.
> 
> I like rsnapshot but it looks a little too complicated to set up

No, it's not at all complicated to setup, I think.

3.1. 30 second version (for the impatient)

./configure --sysconfdir=/etc
su
make install
cp /etc/rsnapshot.conf.default /etc/rsnapshot.conf

Then all you need to do is modify the configuration file. It has
a lot of comments and thus should be quite self explanatory.

> and 
> I'm not sure I understand how it works. 

It creates "snapshot" directories of the directories which are
to be backed up. Under these directories, you'll then find the
data which is backed up. To restore a file (or everything), you'd
just copy it from there. Can't be any easier ;) Just give it a
try!

The great thing about rsnapshot is, that it requires so little
space - usually just the space for one backup + something, for
very MANY backups (a user reported, that he has 20 backups
and only occupies 130% of space of the original data! That's
hard to beat).

> I figure for something as 
> important as backups, I'm better off sticking to methods that I
> understand a little.

Have you read the Howto?

Alexander Skwar
-- 
Ah..  Das war HTML...  was ich nicht kann...
                -- Oliver Zendel